Balyeat's in VanWert, Ohio

Just got back from a long weekend in Michigan and we stopped for lunch in VanWert. We ate at a marvelous diner called Blalyeat's which has been in business for 70 years. It's a diner, probably unchanged since the 50s. Linoleum floor, knotty pine on the walls, but the food! The specials for Friday included heart and tongue, but we ordered roast beef and rost pork. For $6 each, we got a generous slice of our respective meats, plus mashed potatoes and gravy and creamed cauliflower. Wonderful! The homemade pies were to die for. I had a tall slice of lemon meringue and my husband got raspberry. Both were the kind one's grandma probably made, with tender, homemade crusts. I'd go out of my way to eat here again.

It looks as though it was re-done in the 60s or 70s and not touched since then. I have a postcard of it from either the 20s or 30s--it looked much better then. I'm sure that in the 60s or 70s they thought they were improving it, but it looks so much more worn out now than if they had kept the black and white tile floor and chrome fixtures ...